User talk:Nicstick
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[edit] Adoption and Fletcher Sibthorp
Hello Nicstick! It's great to hear from you! I'm pleased I haven't yet scared you away with all the technical stuff!
OK, a few things first to begin with. I presume you've grasped userpages and talkpages now (as evidenced by your contributions - which ARE in the public domain for everyone to see, but we'll come back to that later). You may want to start adding material to your talk page, such as userboxes? To show that your userpage is a userpage, you can type {{userpage}} onto it and save it to let others know. To show that you've been adopted you can type {{adoptee|Jza84}} onto your talk page which will give you a badge to say you've been adopted by me, it's your choice though! I'm going to put one on my userpage to say I've adopted you though (transparency thing again!), but do let me know if you object to this.
I'm pleased you've decided to take a look at the policies, guidelines and principles of Wikipedia before diving in; certainly I wish I had done this before diving in myself a long while back. What I would say about these policies, guidelines and principles is that they are that; be mindful of which are policies and which are guidelines. Also, it is unlikely you'll ever be able to have knowledge of all of them. There are many pages of material about this, some are evolving all the time as new problems arise, whilst some contradict others (and make this clear). The following navigation template provides links to some core pages (click on the SHOW icon on the right):
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Regarding your very own user space to create articles, you can create your own sandbox in your userspace. For example, as your username is "Nickstick," your sandbox would be at "User:Nicstick/Sandbox" - you can click on it directly to go to it and edit! My sandbox is at User:Jza84/Sandbox2 which has some tests and collections of junk I am or have been working on! Your sandbox is yours to edit as you see fit (so long as you're not doing anything unsavory in there!) and is probably the place you wanted to create the draft article???
On editting articles, and putting advanced features in like inline references, pictures, navigation templates etc, I would concentrate firsly on getting some text together for the basis of an article, then I can give you a rundown on some of the fancy stuff? Certainly images are a minefield that we need to take extra care and attention with when we reach that point (copyright issues are a nightmare)! I actually operate rather differently with regards to editting though - when I see something good on another article, I ususally hit the edit button and see how it was constructed and borrow and ammend the coding for my needs. Just a pointer if you ever see something you like and want to use it.
Does this help so far? Do let me know if it is or isn't helpful, -- Jza84 · (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
- Being bold is a great guidline - especially for newcomers who often find it quite hard to believe they really can be bold. It is a very reassuring page I have to say! There are other simillar ones too, Wikipedia:Your first article is also helpful, whilst there are also guides on advanced editting like Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners. Just give me a shout when you need a hand and I'll try to help.
- I'm sure you'll be as addicted as me in no-time at this rate! I suppose the right step now if for you to spend a little time navigating through Wikipedia, then have a blast at a draft article (or even try finding corrections in existing ones if you feel confident enough). Be mindful that you can't actually harm Wikipedia (you really can't), if you deleted an article, messed up some coding or even vandalised an article with swearing and nonsense (which I'm sure you won't!), another editor can always come along at revert to a previous version. -- Jza84 · (talk) 14:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
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- You can edit talk pages with a reply without creating a new section yes. If you look at the heading above (as an example), it has an "Edit" function against it on the far-right side. Do you see it? If you hit that you can leave a reply within a section (without a heading), like I've done for you here! The need for puns and outstanding wit is thus nullified!
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- If leaving a reply within a sub-section, it is helpful (but by no means mandatory) to "indent" your comments. (See the "indent" page I've linked).
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- A good tie-in here is sections and sub-sections. If you add a section with a title, the magic of Wikipedia will indeed generate a contents slip for you! For example, if we wanted a section on Sibthorp's early life, you would type == Early life == which will generate the section header for you. This will then also appear as a numbered section automatically in the contents!
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- On my replies to your comments and vice versa, my comments are here on your page, whereas your comments are on my talk page. I like this system, as you get the "orange bar - new message notice" at the top straight away. Others however like to keep discussions between users on one user's page. Just personal preferences I guess. -- Jza84 · (talk) 14:28, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
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- Hello there and good afternoon! Things are really coming on quickly! It's great to see you've began building your userpage, and you've clearly got to grips with the userbox thing!... Malaysia eh? Lucky you!... I did make a mistake earlier (EVEN I make them sometimes, can you believe it?). I meant to say that the adoption template goes on your userpage, not your talk page! Sorry about that!
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- Regarding the highlighting of words, blue words are those that have been "linked". So, let's say I want you to have a link to Chris Ofili, I would type [[Chris Ofili]] with a double "[" and "]" around it which (when saved) gives us "Chris Ofili" linked in blue! That's basically what it is. Linking is done to help readers navigate around the website. In an article, it's normally interesting or confusing words, names or terms that are linked. A few guides that go more indepth exist: Help:Interwiki linking, Wikipedia:Build the web and Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context are the core pages on this.
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- Purple highlighted words should (if your Internet Browser is the same as mine) be those links that you've already been to. So, Chris Ofili should appear blue to you, until you've clicked on his article. Then, it should turn purple. Think of it as an aid-to-memory or something to ease navigation. Does that help at all?
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- You mentioned that you have some confusion about a tab at the top, could you elaborate on what and where the tab is? I think I might know what you mean, but I don't want to assume anything and give you a wrong answer which confuses matters further!
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- Your User:Nicstick/Sandbox on Sibthorp is coming along nicely now, it's clear you've grasped the basic house style on layout and look of an article and the tone is professional which is really great. Infact it's fantastic for a first draft? We need now to look at what is considered by some as golden rule number 1.... Verifiability. "Readers should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed." Have you been refering to a book or website for your material on Sibthorp? If so, we can attribute some of the material here to the material there. If you're still adding text to the article for now though, we can come back to this until you feel ready??? -- Jza84 · (talk) 13:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
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- Hello again, and sorry for the delay (I like to be prompt!).
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- OK, your question about the tab was what I thought you meant yes. On Wikipedia, there are usually two to six tabs at the top of each page. On main article space you should have the following:
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- Article: for naivation to the main article page.
- Discussion: also known as the talk page, is a page where contributors can discuss changes to an article. These are used to raise and address concerns, discuss controvertial or questionable statements. On some pages, like say, God, Evolution, Abortion, Capital Punishment etc, as I'm sure you can imagine, these pages can become rather heated. It is best practice to remain polite and civil and not make personal attacks or remarks. You're clearly a reasonable person so I'm sure you won't be behind anything like this, but, if you get really involved in the future, you may face it.
- Edit this page: is for just that - editting the page ;). Fairly self explainatory.
- History: clicking this will display a list of changes made to an article, including who made what changes and when! It is on this page that editors can revert back to old versions of articles if there has been a questionable or problematic edit made.
- Move: is to change the title of the page. So if you created a page called Fletcher Sibthorpe with an extra "e" on the end in error, you could move the article to the correct spelling. Moves are sometimes done to avoid controvertial naming.
- Watch: this adds the page to a personal "watch list". In this list you will be alerted as to any changes by other users to articles you've added.
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- I hope that helps on the tabs. For sources, well, again this can be a minefield. The Wikipedia:Reliable sources page is probably the best bet for the official stance. How I personally take the issue is that one should try to produce sources that other people can go and check. Certainly word of mouth statements won't stand-up to scrutinisation from the editting community and administrators. Things like books and websites are almost always perfectly fine to use. The Wikipedia:Inline references page outlines how to produce footnotes, whilst Wikipedia:Citation templates explains some of the fancy editting features one can use to properly display sources. Citation templates also show you what bits of info you will need to fill out. How's that? Does that help? Let me know if you want me to elaborate any more on this as I know it's alot to take in. -- Jza84 · (talk) 21:31, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
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- Hello there! I was wondering how things were getting on. Is everything OK? Your sandbox article is really coming along nicely.
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- I had a thought the other day: when you're ready, you might want to join the Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts or at least ask for their input on your proposed article? WikiProjects are simillar to forums, but for Wikipedians with simillar specialisms and interests. I'm a member of four, and find them very useful. Just a thought!
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- You raise a good question about doubling and tripling up sources within one article. It is possible however. If you take a look at say Oldham, and look at the reference section, you will see a list of sources each with its own number. Some also have lower-case letters next to them. Each letter is a recurrence of using the same source.
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- To achieve the doubling-up system of sources, you have to give your source a "name". (This will be quite hard for me to explain I think! But here goes!...). For example, if I wanted to cite the same book I would use one of the Wikipedia:Citation templates for books. Within that coding I would write the following in my text...
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- "<ref name="Mr Happy">{{cite book|title=Mr Happy Goes Fishing|year=2008|author=Mr Example|publisher=Example publishing Ltd}}</ref>"
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- This will generate a source at the end of the article. If I wanted to re-use the same source for a quote I would then simply type the name of the reference at the end. So:
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- "Fletcher Sibthorp is considered the greatest figurative painter alive"<ref name="Mr Happy"/>
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- Another explanation is at Wikipedia:REFB#Same_ref_used_twice_or_more. I've posted all the instructions below, but delete if you don't want it. Tyrenius (talk) 00:53, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] Guide to referencing
Click on "show" to open contents.
| Using references (citations) |
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I thought you might find it useful to have some information about references (refs) on wikipedia. These are important to validate your writing and inform the reader. Any editor can removed unreferenced material; and unsubstantiated articles may end up getting deleted, so when you add something to an article, it's highly advisable to also include a reference to say where it came from. Referencing may look daunting, but it's easy enough to do. Here's a guide to getting started.
A reference must be accurate, i.e. it must prove the statement in the text. To validate "Mike Brown climbed Everest", it's no good linking to a page about Everest, if Mike Brown isn't mentioned, nor to one on Mike Brown, if it doesn't say that he climbed Everest. You have to link to a source that proves his achievement is true. You must use reliable sources, such as published books, mainstream press, authorised web sites, and official documents. Blogs, Myspace, Youtube, fan sites and extreme minority texts are not usually acceptable, nor is original research, e.g. your own unpublished, or self-published, essay or research.
The first thing you have to do is to create a "Notes and references" section (unless it already exists). This goes towards the bottom of the page, below the "See also" section and above the "External links" section. Enter this code:
The next step is to put a reference in the text. Here is the code to do that. It goes at the end of the relevant term, phrase, sentence, or paragraph to which the note refers, and after punctuation such as a full stop, without a space (to prevent separation through line wrap):
Whatever text you put in between these two tags will become visible in the "Notes and references" section as your reference.
Open the edit box for this page, copy the following text (inserting your own text where indicated), paste it at the bottom of the page and save the page:
(End of text to copy and paste.) It should appear like this:
You need to include the information to enable the reader to find your source. For an online newspaper source, it might look like this:
When uploaded, it appears as:
Note the single square brackets around the URL and the article title. The format is:
Make sure there is a space between the URL and the Title. This code results in the URL being hidden and the title showing as a link. Use double apostrophes for the article title (it is quoted text), and two single quote marks either side of the name of the paper (to generate italics). Double square brackets round the name of the paper create an internal link (a wikilink) to the relevant wikipedia article. Apostrophes must go outside the brackets. The date after The Guardian is the date of the newspaper, and the date after "Retrieved on" is the date you accessed the site – useful for searching the web archive in case the link goes dead. Dates are wikilinked so that they work with user preference settings to display the date in the format the user wishes.
You can use sources which are not online, but which you have found in a library or elsewhere—in which case leave out the information which is not relevant. The newspaper example above would be formatted like this:
When uploaded, it appears as:
Here is an example for a book:
When uploaded, it appears as:
Make sure you put two single quote marks round the title (to generate italics), rather than one double quote mark.
These formats are all acceptable for dates:
You may prefer to use a citation template to compile details of the source. The template goes between the ref tags and you fill out the fields you wish to. Basic templates can be found here: Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles/Citation quick reference
The first time a reference appears in the article, you can give it a simple name in the <ref> code:
The second time you use the same reference in the article, you need only to create a short cut instead of typing it all out again:
You can then use the short cut as many times as you want. Don't forget the /, or it will blank the rest of the article! A short cut will only pick up from higher up the page, so make sure the first ref is the full one. Some symbols don't work in the ref name, but you'll find out if you use them. You can see multiple use of the same refs in action in the article William Bowyer (artist). There are 3 sources and they are each referenced 3 times. Each statement in the article has a footnote to show what its source is.
The above method is simple and combines references and notes into one section. A refinement is to put the full details of the references in their own section headed "References", while the notes which apply to them appear in a separate section headed "Notes". The notes can be inserted in the main article text in an abbreviated form as seen in Harriet Arbuthnot or in a full form as in Brown Dog affair.
More information can be found at:
I hope this helps. If you need any assistance, let me know. |
[edit] Proud Mother userbox
G'day Nicstick, I noticed you made that proud mother userbox on your userpage. I left a message at the userbox talk page but you might miss it? I've put the userbox onto a template for you. It will be easier to put the code onto your userpage by simply using {{Template:User Mother}} instead of all that extra code. Cheers, Sting au Buzz Me... 23:14, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Update
Hello again Nicstick!
I just wondered how you were getting on and if you needed assistance with anything? I haven't heard from you for a week or so and thus presume you're doing OK? -- Jza84 · (talk) 14:40, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
- Hello to you too! Don't worry, still here......I've been busy in all walks of life and as for the FS article, I have solved double referencing and finding/uploading/inserting pictures, so am nearing completion! There's an interesting bit I would like to add at some point to the end of the article, but I need to get my sourcing/citation sorted out and it's a bit tricky - involving a French TV station and production company. I'm on the case though, with the help of some French speaking friends. I suppose I can add to the article at a later date anyway!
- I went and had a look at the Wikiprojects -Vis Arts, specifically, and I've also looked at some forums. Now I feel a bit stuck and not quite sure where to go from here. To be completely honest, it's felt so 'safe' hiding in my sandbox, the thought of actually posting (is that what you call it?) the article FOR REAL is a little terrifying. Could you be a lovely adopter and have a look at my article - as it stands - and tell me one, what you think of it and two, what you suggest I do now?
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- Hello! Great to hear you're still around!
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- The article is really good! I enjoyed reading it. I can not believe you're feeling terrified about posting it! There are so many other very poor articles. This one is very strong.
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- It is ready to go live; there's no doubt about it! I would consider adding an "infobox" to the article though. Infoboxes are a kind of consistently-formatted table appended to the top righthand corner of articles, with the aim of providing summary information and improve navigation. I'm sure you will have seen some around. L. S. Lowry has one, as does Van Gogh; these articles use the Template:Infobox Artist (<- If you click on the link it displays how to use this in your article).
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- Other than that it looks good. Do be mindful that once you "publish" or "post" the article, the entire editting community is quite within their rights to edit it further. This isn't a bad thing mind, it often drives articles forwards collaboratively, building upon earlier versions and adding material as it becomes avaliable.
Hello! Lovely to hear from you and thanks for all your positive feedback. You know, the reason I am a bit nervous about posting it is that I have this image - of flocks of Jungle Book vultures sitting on editorial branches preparing to tear my newborn article to shreds. Overripe imagination, perhaps? Good suggestion about the infobox. I was wondering what they were called. I will look into it.
One question - I was wondering why/how my last reply to you ended up on my own talk page?? Cheerio Nicstick (talk) 14:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
- Fantastic stuff! Congratulations! Infact, I award you with...
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The Barnstar of Fine Arts | |
| For your enthusiasm and dedication to creating a proper Fletcher Sibthorp article! -- Jza84 · (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2008 (UTC) |
- I made a few changes, but just cosmetic and formatting stuff. The link (provided) shows what I changed. Well done!
- Next step, is to ensure this article is not "orphaned" (see Wikipedia:Orphan). Might be worth finding some articles that could include mention of Sibthrop? Great stuff, -- Jza84 · (talk) 16:51, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
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- Hello and thank you for your lovely Fine Art Barnstar award. Made me feel warm and fuzzy. Is this something I can proudly display on my user page? If so...how? Tried a few things but it's so enormous.
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- Hello there Nicstick! I hope all is well. I've noticed for a while now you've not been around a great deal since your fantastic contribution to Sibthorp's entry. I just wondered if you're still likely to be around and if so, if I can be of assistance, and if not, if there's any reason why? I hope you're in the former part of that question.
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